Amberly Media Center

Zombie extras are slouching through the streets of Paul’s hometown, Sierra Madre, California. Paul and his friends are there everyday after school to watch the filming of the movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Not only do they get to meet some of the stars, they end up being “zombie” extras in the final scene, they discover an FBI agent spying on the movie crew, and end up doing some spying of their own on a famous scientist who helped invent the atomic bomb and may just be working as a double-agent for the United States of America’s Cold War enemy, Russia. You’ll enjoy this crazy book about movies and life in the 1950s, that could make a great movie of its own.

Elijah is the first child born in the town of Buxton, Canada, founded as a home for slaves who have escaped on the Underground Railroad. His parents try to protect him from the horrible life they led as slaves in the United States. Elijah learns to read and write. His parents even worry that he is too fragile. But all that changes when one of the former slaves living in Buxton steals the money that has been sent to Michigan to free the family of the man that Elijah works with. Determined to do something to help, Elijah goes with Mr. Leroy to help recover the money. Once he crosses the Detroit River into Michigan, Elijah discovers the horrors of slavery for himself. He also discovers what it takes to be a hero.

Full of adventures and humor, Christopher Paul Curtis has a unique voice that deserves to be read aloud.

Do you love puzzles? Winston Breen can’t live without them and he finds them in everything from the patterns on wrapping paper to the sausage on a pizza pie. Winston loves puzzles for their own sake, but then he and his sister discover four mysterious pieces of wood that are part of a larger puzzle that may hold the key to a million dollar treasure.

You can play along (answers are in the back of the book) or you can just enjoy the mystery. 

Other puzzle books:

• Chasing Vermeer (F Bal)
• Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School (PB Sa)
• Walter Wick’s Eye Spy books (793.73 Wi)
• Westing Game (F Ra)
• Where’s Waldo? books (E Ha)

“Are you a gifted child looking for Special Opportunities?”

Eleven-year-old Reynie is one of several children who answer this unusual newspaper ad only to find that the tests they must take are stranger still. In the end only four children pass the tests: Reynie, Sticky, and Constance. Their mission: to spy on what goes on at a private school that may be up to no good.

If you like the odd characters and plots of the Series of Unfortunate Events or books by Roald Dahl, or you like figuring out the puzzles in Artemis Fowl or books by Blue Balliett, you’ll love finding out if Reynie and his friends can figure out what is really going on at the Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened.

All day long her teachers yell “Clementine-pay-attention!” The problem is that she IS paying attention: to what’s going on outside the classroom window, to her maybe best friend Margaret who is trying to cut glue out of her hair, and to other things going on at school that land Clementine in trouble. And Clementine has lots of “interesting” solutions to problems. To help Margaret, she suggests cutting a few more patches out of her hair. When Margaret ends up cutting off almost all her hair, Clementine suggests drawing curls with her mom’s permanent markers. All of which lands Clementine in big trouble. Clementine also “pays attention” at home. Her father is the manager of their apartment building and one of his daily problems is keeping the pigeons from making a mess all over the front of the building. Then one day Clementine notices that a woman who lives in the building feeds the pigeons out the window and comes up with the perfect solution to her dad’s problem: feed the pigeons somewhere else.

You’ll enjoy Clementine’s hilarious problems and cheer when she finally gets recognized for paying attention to the right things once in awhile/

If you could go back in time where would you go? Johnny Maxwell knows exactly where, or should I say “when”–May 21, 1941. That’s the day the German’s accidentally bombed his hometown. Johnny knows that if he goes back and changes things there will be consequences, but if he can just warn the right people in time, the air raid sirens will go off and innocent people might be saved.

I liked the way Terry Pratchett mixes humor and adventure and makes the reader think about time. Johnny’s “sidekicks” are all interesting characters who play important roles in the story.

This is the third book in the Johnny Maxwell Trilogy, but each book is a separate and complete story that doesn’t rely on the reader knowing what happened in the previous books.

Have you ever dreamed of being an animal? 11-year-old Isabel knows everything about whales and can’t wait to go on the annual whale watch with her 5th grade class. But this year’s whale watch is something unique. The class sees dozens of whales including some very rare species. Some on the boat are scared, but Isabel leans right over the railing to get a picture and falls in the water. While she seems to disappear into the cold Atlantic Ocean, she has actually been transformed into a humpback whale. The whales tell her she is one of the Chosen, humans who become whales for a time.

The thing I enjoyed most about this book is how Isabel learned about the ways of the whales and also learned about what it means to be human. For example, when one of her whale friends becomes trapped in a net, she doesn’t give up hope. She find a “tool” that she can hold in her jaws to saw the ropes and she teaches the other whales to help her free the trapped whale.

Aston, Dianna Hutts. A Seed is Sleepy. (581.4 Ast)

Beautifully illustrated by Sylvia Long, this book looks like a slim, poetic field notebook full of details appropriate for first through third graders learning about seeds.

Kravetz, Jonathan. Learning About Simple Machines with Graphic Organizers. (521.6 Kra)

“A seed is sleepy. It lies there tucked inside its flower, on its cone, or beneath the soil. Snug. Still.” (illustrated with a dried sunflower)

“A seed is secretive. It does not reveal itself too quickly.” (illustrated by a Texas Mountain Laurel seed pod and flower. Additional text describes how seeds are often dormant for a season or two waiting for warm weather)

“A seed is inventive. To find a spot to grow, a seed might leap from its pod, or cling to a child’s shoestring, or tumble throug a bear’s belly. A seed hopes to land where there is plenty of sunlight, soil, and water.”

Pimm, Nancy Roe. The Heart of the Beast : Eight Great Gorilla Stories. (599.884 Pim)

Eight stories of famous gorrillas — from Koko, the gorilla who learned sign language, to Snowflake, the albino gorilla. The author recounts the basic story then provides a brief chapter with the “Gorilla Facts: The Rest of the Story. ” Black and white photos are modest but helpful.

  Rockwell, Anne. Who Lives in an Alligator Hole? (597.98 Roc)

A picture book with simple narrative that focuses on the habitat of the Everglades and the impact of man.

Kravetz, Jonathan. Learning About Energy with Graphic Organizers. (333.79 Kra)

Fiedler, Julie. Learning About Force and Motion with Graphic Organizers. (531 Fie)

Fiedler, Julie. Learning About Heat and Temperature with Graphic Organizers. (538 Fie)

Kravetz, Jonathan. Learning About Plant Growth with Graphic Organizers. (571.8 Kra)

Fiedler, Julie. Learning About Food Chains and Food Webs with Graphic Organizers. (577.16 Fie)

A great series of introductions to science using concise text which defines key words in context, illustrates the concept with appropriate color photos, and uses a rich variety of data tables, flow charts, and other graphic organizers.

Mattern, Joanne. Igneous Rocks and the Rock Cycle. (552 Mat)

Mattern, Joanne. Sedimentary Rocks and the Rock Cycle. (552 Mat)

Mattern, Joanne. Metamorphic Rocks and the Rock Cycle. (552 Mat)

Mattern, Joanne. Weathering and Erosion and the Rock Cycle. (551.3 Mat)

Mattern, Joanne. Minerals and the Rock Cycle. (549 Mat)

Mattern, Joanne. Sand, Silt, and Mud and the Rock Cycle. (551.3 Mat)

Concise text and clear, colorful graphics and photos explain each of the major types of rocks and formations. Content skills are identified on “tabs” at the tops and sides of the page. Layout is surprisingly appealing given the large number of elements on each page. 

Bair, Sheila. Rock, Brock, and the Savings Shock. (332.02 Bai)

Rhyming tale of two twins: one spent his allowance and the other saved it. When grandpa promises to match their savings, they start on the road to become millionaires.

Fisher, Valorie. How High Can a Dinosaur Count? And Other Math Mysteries. (513 Fis)

A series of one page illustrated math story problems involving simple multiplication, addition, subtraction, money, and time. For each page there are additional questions found at the back of the book.

Goldstone, Bruce. Great Estimations. (519.5 Gol)

With beautiful color photos, the author gives readers the secret to guessing how many jellybeans are in the bowl along with other estimation tasks from estimating how many swimmers are in the pool to estimating the number of grains of rice. Readers start by identifying groups of ten objects, then a hundred, and then a thousand objects. Hints are provided on each page.

HS/MS Media Centers
“The Beautiful Game: Why the World Loves Soccer,” National Geographic, June, 2006
What I’m Reading — Posted by pbutts | June 03, 2006 22:46

National Geographic’s cover story feature for the 2006 World Cup is a must read. Click here to read online, or get a copy of the magazine for a more leisurely reading of this collection of essays on the world’s most popular sport.

The connection between politics and sport comes up in several of the articles, including an article on one of this year’s Cinderella teams, Cote d’Ivoire, which will be in it’s first World Cup while the country is in civil war, and an article on the Angolan team which is also bringing together the people of a war-torn country.

Other articles are more philosophical like Robert Coover’s piece, “Morality Play: Soccer as Theater.” Coover contrasts soccer with sports that Americans traditionally favor where statistics are king:

    “Which in turn suggests another of the game’s dreamlike qualities: its ahistoricity. One is left at the end, not with data, but with impressionistic images of bodies in motion. Nothing of importance can be statistically recorded about a match except corners, shots, goals and saves (the American effort to record assists is admirable but—since it’s sometimes a complete mystery, even with TV replays, who’s scored the goal—a bit desperate), and these will tell you almost nothing about the game itself. The player who actually wins the game may be the one who moves into space at the opposite side of the field, drawing a defender, forcing a new configuration upon the defense and making virtually inevitable a goal which was before impossible, but no one—not even he—may be aware of this. It’s all narrative, and thus subjective: no two match reports are ever alike, even the goal-scorers are often different from newspaper to newspaper. Each is a story, a sequence of ambivalent metaphors, a personal revelation couched in the idiom of the faith. No game I know of is so dependent upon such flowing intangibles as “pattern” and “rhythm” and “vision” and “understanding.” Which may all be illusions. And at the same time it is also a very simple game: like dreams, almost childlike.”